Historic Newspapers has the largest archive of original newspaper copies which tell the stories of America and the world as they were told and read at the time. Find original stories from some of history’s most important events with our selection of original newspapers from 1931. Our archive is a great place to start if you want to learn about events that happened in 1931, or find a particular story that interests you. It was an eventful year in history all over the world, filled with news of devastating natural disasters, economic crisis, and fascinating changes in world politics. See how journalists understood this information at the time, as well as how the public reacted. An original 1930 newspaper is a great way to understand history and how it was perceived in the moment, and gives a more authentic understanding of what was going on at the time.
January 2, 1931 
South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics.
February 10, 1931 New Delhi becomes the capital of India.
February 14, 1931 The original film version of “Dracula” is released, with Bela Lugosi reprising his Broadway role of Count Dracula.
February 18, 1931 
Novelist and teacher Toni Morrison is born (d. 2019).
March 3, 1931 
The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States’s national anthem.
March 25, 1931 
The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
March 26, 1931 
American actor and film director Leonard Nimoy is born (d. 2015).
May 1, 1931 Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City.
June 5, 1931 German Chancellor Dr. Heinrich Brüning visits London, where he warns Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald that the collapse of the Austrian banking system, caused by the bankruptcy of the ‘Creditanstalt‘, has also left the entire German banking system on the verge of collapse.
July 1, 1931 Milan Central Station officially opens in Italy, becoming one of the main railway stations in Europe.
July-November 1931 The Huang He floods in China kill between 850,000 and 4,000,000 people.
August 31, 1931 The Yangtze River floods in China, leaving twenty-three million people homeless.
September 10, 1931 The worst hurricane in Belize history kills an estimated 1,500 people.
October 17, 1931 American gangster Al Capone is sentenced to eleven years in prison for tax evasion in Chicago, Illinois.
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